Inspired by a wave of climate activism, national leaders were expected to come up with new and more ambitious plans on how to reduce emissions in the next decade.
The COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, would be the first real test of their determination to deliver on what they had promised under the Paris Agreement.
The coronavirus pandemic has hindered these plans, giving some governments a new excuse to stall. But Covid-19 has definitely not stopped climate change.
The pandemic has also shown the world that large and previously unthinkable changes are possible.
Despite the global turmoil, several of the world’s biggest polluters have raised their long-term climate goals, putting the world a short distance from the Paris Agreement goal: reducing emissions and thus limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.
Experts are cautiously optimistic.
“There is now recognition that when the world’s major economies are concerned, they can intervene and correct these market failures,” said Mike Davis, CEO of Global Witness, an NGO that focuses on human rights, climate and the environment. “We saw this to some extent in response to Covid, and perhaps it started to destroy the myth that, essentially, we are all slaves to the free market, [and] We can not do anything with it. ”
Devastating impacts
The effects of climate change have become more difficult than ever to ignore in 2020.
But global warming is only one aspect of the climate crisis.
“The biggest impacts of climate change have been felt through droughts, floods, rising sea levels, stronger tropical storms, hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones and also melting glaciers,” Petteri Taalas, WMO secretary general, told CNN.
In the first six months of this year, nearly 10 million people were forced to leave their homes due to disasters caused or aggravated by climate change, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center in Geneva (IDMC). For some, the change was temporary, but many face a long-term shift.
India, Bangladesh and the Philippines were the three most affected countries, totaling more than 6 million displaced people among them.
Developing countries are often disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change due to their location and the lack of access to funds and technologies that could help mitigate the effects.
But 2020 has shown that no country is immune from such a disruption. Hundreds of thousands of people from some of the richest countries in the world have been forced to leave their homes, have lost their livelihoods – and sometimes their lives – because of fires, storms and floods. It is estimated that 53,000 people in the USA and 51,000 more in Australia were displaced in the first six months of the year alone.
And wherever such disasters occur, the poorest still suffer the most, according to Alexandra Bilak of IDMC.
“Even in high-income countries – in California, for example – there are people who did not have access to insurance and lost everything, and it is with them that we are particularly concerned, because it is they who will end up in very prolonged situations where their vulnerabilities will increase, “she said.
Glimpse of hope
The effects of climate change were devastating in 2020, but they could become even more disastrous if global warming remains in line with current trends.
The WMO says there is now at least one chance in five that average global temperatures will temporarily exceed pre-industrial levels by 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2024 – a critical limit in the Paris Agreement.
According to the agreement, most of the world has agreed to limit warming to below 2 degrees Celsius – and to try to keep it at 1.5 degrees.
“We are already warming up to 1.2 degrees and the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] says that for the well-being of humanity and also for the well-being of the biosphere, the 1.5 degree target would be more favored “, said Taalas.
“With the 2 degree target, we would see more negative impacts of climate change, it would undermine global food production capacity, there would be many coastal cities that would suffer from rising sea levels and we would see more Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones. “
Global greenhouse gas emissions need to drop 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 if there is any chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and 25% to keep it below 2 degrees, from according to the IPCC.
The good news, said Taalas, is that we have the technological and economic means to achieve these goals. The bad news? Most nations have not yet adopted concrete plans to get there.
To achieve climate targets, emissions need to fall by at least the same amount – about 7.6% – each year for the next decade. Over there It’s a chance for that to happen.
“Until recently, I think everyone was very depressed about the way policies and actions were developing on climate change,” Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics, told CNN.
Hare said there was an understandable slowdown in action because of the pandemic: “It looked like the political momentum was ebbing, but in the past six or eight weeks, especially since September, when China’s President Xi Jinping announced China’s move toward to zero net emissions before 2060, the whole climate has changed. ”
South Africa, Japan, South Korea and Canada announced new net zero targets for 2050, following promises made by China, the EU and the United Kingdom.
According to the Climate Action Tracker analysis, these new promises put the world at an impressive distance from the Paris Agreement goal. The tracker, a partnership between the NewClimate Institute and Climate Analytics, said current plans would translate into 2.1 degrees of warming by 2100.
But the new promises are just that – promises to achieve something in three decades, when most current governments will be gone.
“The definitive test is whether countries will actually step up action in the short term for 2030,” said Hare.
The 2050 and 2060 targets are steps in the right direction and should not be underestimated, but what really matters is what governments do now. The next decade will be the real turning point.